Entre caminhos e lagos: percepção ambiental e habilidades de pescadores Kaixana

Abstract

Fishing is one of the main Kaixana skills, based on a unique and relational environmental perception. This anthropological research described the Kaixana perceptions of lacustrine environments and analyzed the coexistence relationships that shape the different fishing landscapes of pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) and tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum). It sought to understand their ecological knowledge from their own ways of perceiving and coexisting, "without reducing them" to "technical parameters." From an indigenous perspective, the seasonal dynamics, the criteria for choosing fishing spots in Sacambú and Lago Grande, the integration of techniques, the perception of cosmological relationships, the development of skills, as well as the transformation of knowledge between generations and its interfaces with species management and conservation projects were analyzed. The methodology consisted of a path-based ethnography, anchored in participant involvement in the Sacambú community of Lago Grande as well as in São Paulo de Olivença. The field experiences became moments of ethnographic recording and reconnection, in which memories emerged from the contact of the researcher, a member of the indigenous community, with each revisited landscape. By articulating a dialogue between distinct ways of perceiving life in an ecosystem of interaction and care, the study demonstrates how the Kaixana fishing skills, their ability to read movements, identify places, and interact with schools of fish, constitute cosmopolitics of care for sociobiodiversity.